The phone's really just the Big Red Button
by Chibijanai
Summary: The failure of a world line where the phone didn't completely control the microwave thanks to Daru. 'Mild crack' because it can't be classified with the randomness of the other ones. That probably scared you away plenty! Set at Ruka's D-mail.


A.N: Umm, I got bored and boredom made me do this. I realised that the Steins; Gate archive was seriously lacking in... anything so I thought I'd post this up. What a way to ruin a fandom... I have no idea what exactly what I was trying to acheive; I wanted to do something funny and then thought about crack (which didn't work at all incidentally) and then it just didn't work at all. So, whoever accidentally found their way here, enjoy. As much as you can anyway.

BTW, I'd usually use first names but 'Rintarou' sounds lame and 'Itaru' doesn't really have that ring to it so yeah...

**Disclaimer: If I owned it, everything would probably fall terribly short like this fiction here.  
**

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**World line 0.567347  
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Despite the misgivings Okabe had to Ruka's plan of gender swapping, he decided to go with it, seeing that it probably wouldn't do much harm anyway.

"All right!" he said with the enthusiasm of a special kind of mad scientist, "Let's do this!"

It wasn't long before he'd spotted the first flaw to this plan.

"You're turning 17 this year, right?" he asked seriously, "That means you were born in 1993... were mobile phones popular at the time?" he asked.

Everyone pretty much came to a conclusion quickly and lapsed into deep thought about how they could get past this restriction while they waited for Daru to search up the relevant article on the issue. As this was the resident 'Supaa Haker' it took mere seconds so they didn't actually have an awful lot of time to ponder.

It turned that mobile phones only became popular around 1996, and the ability to text probably only came around even later. It seemed as if this little idea was doomed to rest. That was until Okabe broke the silence after another few minutes of pondering and watching Daru and Christina argue about Daru's idiocy, having come up with a genius idea. Who said that genius ideas can't be inspired from a perverted hacker and the other genius? (Nobody did...)

"I got it!" he exclaimed out of the blue, "We can send it to her pager!"

"Oh yeah, pagers were popular back then so it's not impossible!" somebody else said to that effect anyway as a monologue about the history of pagers was too much to harp about, for now.

Anyway, the plan was up and rolling again.

"Okay Rukako, you have an important mission right now." He said, acting cool and not much like the average scientist because they didn't say such childish things... as un-childish as the mission itself could've actually turned out to be, "You've now got to find out whether your mother had a pager and if she does, get the number for it and then we'll see what we can do from there."

Ruka nodded happily: "Yes, understood."

"Good luck!" they called after her as she left on her important mission. After that, they jumped straight into action in preparation for the time of the D-mail. More precisely, Okabe decided to take a nap, Mayuri decided to work on her cosplay outfits for the next time that Ruka decided to come (which was soon), Kurisu decided to get pudding and chow with Mayuri and Daru... he was just being his usual 'perverted gentleman'. One might argue that that and a pervert didn't really have much of a difference. What do you mean a 'harmless pervert'? Anything could be scarring!

The Next Day...

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Daru asked uncertainly.

"Do you seriously think that eating vegetables is really going to change his gender? You know, I'm just doing this experiment for his peace of mind, so that we can say that we tried." Okabe replied.

"He's right. It's not like telling someone to eat vegetables would really change the gender of the baby right? Nobody's proved that or anything and it's just an ancient legend." Kurisu said... although it had to be said that it looked as if she was trying to persuade herself. Weird how young geniuses can doubt something that can't...

"Wait a minute." Daru was already tweaking at the microwave, "How many hours does this message have to go back?"

"Umm, 17.5 years is something like... 153396 hours. Why?"

"Uhmm, you see, all this time, I've actually just been manually controlling the time it can be sent back with the microwave itself... that is, I still haven't found a way to modify the Phone Microwave (name subject to change) so that it's completely remote controlled. As of now, the phone is only the err... initiator (or the big red button marked 'BANG')." Daru explained (this is a simplified speech by the way).

Of course, nobody really noticed it all this time because that's what characters in fanfics do.

"So that means... the D-mail won't go back anymore than 99,999 hours which falls short at about 11.5 years?"

"Yeah... pretty much."

"That's unfortunate..."

It was at this point that Ruka burst into the room with a big smile on his cute face and proclaimed to have the number of his mother's pager. It was all very unfortunate really. So they pretended. Daru brought all the bunch of numbers and stuff up on the screen for the message and realised that it wouldn't all fit, Okabe tweaked it a bit and yada yada you know what they did...

But right before they sent the message, the three geniuses/hacker had a subtle meeting:

"Umm, are you sure it's okay not to do this properly?" Daru asked.

"Why are you asking that when it's your fault?" Okabe retorted.

"Stop bickering. I doubt it was going to make a lot of difference to her... I mean his gender anyway so it's probably going to be harmless either way." Kurisu chipped in with all her scientific glory...though muted since this was a 'subtle meeting'.

"Fine. Let's be done with this." Okabe concluded with his trademark mad scientist laugh and turned to Ruka, "Now, the moment of truth is here! Labomem 006, it is your time to shine! To prove that you will be an asset to the Future Gadget Laboratory!"

The Phone Microwave (name subject to change) (someone really should change the name and be done with it) was turned on with several sweeps of the arm and then an exasperated hand, as the magnificent, glorious sweeps had devolved into muttered curses. But he was stubborn and Kurisu got impatient and _that _devolved into an argument, which didn't last long, thanks to Ruka whom was getting impatient himself... And the fact that the backwards spinning microwave did evoke an abnormal amount of fear for a... backwards spinning microwave.

"Right, this is the moment of truth!" Okabe went back to his (further simplified) mad scientist speech, "Rukako," he slammed open the microwave and electrical sparks jumped around inside the microwave as if threatening to burst out, "NOW!"

There was a moment of hesitation as she marvelled at the sight of the Phone Microwave (name subject to change) and she pressed the 'send' button.

* * *

Well, they could only watch as the microwave kept making that god-awful racket for about a minute or so. Okabe noted that he didn't seem to be getting that weird sensation of world line traversing and everyone couldn't help but wince in advance for the inevitablility that Tennouji-san or 'Mr Braun' would come crashing upstairs and chew the hell out of them... well, 'them' pretty much means 'Okabe' really.

As if on cue (because you can make everything happen 'on cue' here), said resident braun tube lover barged through the carelessly unlocked door (though it might've been fortunate for the door) and screamed:

"WHY THE HELL WON'T YOU LISTEN WHEN I TELL YOU TO STOP?"

Meanwhile, Nae realised that it probably wasn't such a good idea to follow her father out of curiosity as she found herself crying out of the discovery of his fearsome-ness and well... no other way to say this: Okabe's face. But the possiblity that her dear father had nothing to do with it was rather high considering that she did see it from time to time and didn't really think much of it. The other factor however...

As the lab members watched on in sympathy at Okabe bearing the full brunt of Yuugo's (that's Tennouji-san for those who didn't know) wrath, they decided to wonder what on earth it was about Okabe's face that made him so scary. He hadn't even gotten started with his mad scientist antics.

Half an hour later...

Mr Braun finally left leaving an exhausted Okabe to slump on the floor. You'd think considering the fact that Mr Braun was doing all the shouting and Okabe just had to sit there... receiving it all... I guess. Anyway, Mr Braun-

"CHIBI-CHAN! IF YOU CALL ME THAT AGAIN I WILL PERSONALLY COME AROUND TO YOUR HOUSE AND TORTURE YOU!"

What did you just say...?

"...I'll come and torture you?"

No, before that.

"I'll come around to your house?"

Well, I wouldn't mind you coming to visit a little although I'd be a bit- No, I mean, before that as well.

"What could I have said...?"

*Pops a vein* YOU CALLED ME CHIBI-CHAN! IT'S CHIBIJANAI! GET IT RIGHT BRAUNY; I'M NOT SHORT OR LITTLE OR WHATEVER 'CHIBI' MEANS! APOLOGISE!

"...Yeah, right. Freak... with the rest of them lot."

After much squabbling which pretty much shatters the forth wall into infinite bits...

Right then. _Tennouji _(no -san) went back down where he promptly greeted Nae (in case you'd forgotten, she'd ran back down in a fit of tears) who congratulated him on (temporarily) slaying the mad scientist. Since Mr Braun... I mean, _Tennouji _had appeared, there had been not a quiet moment as following this brief respite, he'd taken to chewing out Suzuha instead. From the contents of his rowdy speech bubbles, it seemed like she was slacking of with his favourite chocolate bar this time...

* * *

*Sigh* To think that this wouldn't have happened if Daru had done it right...


End file.
